Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Education + Search

Building on the theme of pre-thought by the consumer pre-search. When shopping online this need becomes clear and so much so that this search engine Become.com splits their search service in two with research and shopping search buttons.

This just fits in naturally with the shopping experience. We all set out to find the best product or service to meet our needs or wants. But what product features are available and what are the pros and cons of these? By product feature I mean any attribute that either you or the manufacturer or retailer has choose to provide information on. In effect this is the consumer self educating themselves and become.com are making it more convenient to undertake this task. This convenience extending to highlighting products that meet your shopping criteria.

The key consumer issue with this service is the independence of the links made between the research and products. Is the research biased by paying retailers or manufacturers to plug good reviews of their products? Become.com make it clear this is not the case and that their priority is to the consumer.

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